So last night at the European offices of Elizabitch Worldwide Industries we watched the June 30th Daily Show. Jon Stewart discussed the Supreme Court’s ruling against restricting the sale of violent video games to kids, accompanied by two hideously graphic clips of attacks by men on a woman. Then he skipped on to the choke-hold attack of Wisconsin Supreme Court judge David Prosser on his colleague Ann Bradley during a heated debate.

Men attacking women. Two simulated but with horrifying violence, one real and occurring in justices’ chambers of all places. It leapt off the tee vee at me. I wondered if Jon were going to riff on that.

No such luck. Jon was appalled by the heave-inducing violence of the video game, and astonished by the assault in chambers (and the partisan selective memory of the justices who were witnesses), but the one-way M->F direction of the violence? Left without comment.

Now I don’t blame Jon. He’s doing his job, which is to entertain the Rockefeller-Republicans-in-jorts who pass for liberals these days and who watch his show in droves. Anything with a whiff of feminism is a big downer to this crowd. Bringing up violence against women, even with his trademark feigned outrage, would sound like a lecture to some and hit too close to home for others. They’d squirm and roll their eyes, which kills the glow of superiority that is part of the magic of the show.

Jon did offer a powerful if oblique comment before the commercial break. “It seems your reality doesn’t inform your politics, your politics informs your reality.”

I’d say Jon said a mouthful there.